Weltanschauung

The Philosopher’s Stone

zenothestoic@protonmail.ch

Category: The Inner Path

  • On Choosing Happiness

    On Choosing Happiness

    I believe on any number of counts, including personal experience, that we have the power to choose to be happy but that the road is not altogether straightforward.

    Our philosopher friends would tell us that happiness is a “quale” – one of a number of different “qualia” which we humans can experience. Qualia are subjective conscious experiences and other examples include emotions such as sadness or anger, or the taste of wine, the redness of an evening sky, the joy in music.

    A quale is “what it subjectively feels like to”….feel sad or happy, or even to be a bat. Or to stare at beauty or ugliness and feel something about it. It is simply the way things seem to us. The nature and even the existence of qualia is a hotly debated topic and Wikipedia has a fair selection of current views on the matter.

    Need this debate worry a seeker of happiness? Not if you are one of the lucky few who by nature get up in the morning with a smile on their face and warm instantly to the day.

    To those of us not so favoured in our disposition, it would augur well to think a little on the subject of happiness and to ponder what it might be and where it might come from.

    I have said elsewhere that much has been written on consciousness, but little empirically proved. In relation to qualia it is fair to say that nothing has been proved as to how or why they arise.

    Progress has indeed been made on what philosophers of mind like to call the “easy” problem of consciousness. The behavioral aspects. Neuroscientists and their learned brethren have made much progress in mapping the neural correlates of our actions and experiences – we are learning to see which parts of the brain light up when we raise our hand, see a bright light, or have an orgasm.

    We most of us readily accept that these are all physical attributes of our make up. That part of us, our brain, which enables us to drive a car, speak, or go to work belongs very much to the physical realm. While we have a very long way to go before answering the “easy” questions of consciousness, few would doubt that the answers will come from physics and its derivative disciplines.

    The “hard” question of consciousness (a term coined by philosopher David Chalmers) is the problem of explaining why and how sentient organisms have qualia or phenomenal experiences. How and why such experiences arise from the simple atoms we are made of.

    As Chalmers put it:

    It is undeniable that some organisms are subjects of experience. But the question of how it is that these systems are subjects of experience is perplexing. Why is it that when our cognitive systems engage in visual and auditory information-processing, we have visual or auditory experience: the quality of deep blue, the sensation of middle C? How can we explain why there is something it is like to entertain a mental image, or to experience an emotion? It is widely agreed that experience arises from a physical basis, but we have no good explanation of why and how it so arises. Why should physical processing give rise to a rich inner life at all? It seems objectively unreasonable that it should, and yet it does.

    My own preference is to believe that this aspect of consciousness, just “is”. That phenomenal experience is a fundamental aspect of nature in the same way as electromagnetism or gravity.

    Phenomenal experience is what you get when matter is arranged a certain way. Where it comes from or why we may never know. It is irreducible – you can’t look into it and expect to find anything deeper. In the same way we may have to accept that electromagnetism just “is” or that matter may be made up of infinitely small strings of vibrating energy.

    Where does all that leave you as a seeker of happiness? It leaves you in the position of needing to explore what factors, internal and external, physical and mental, will produce in you this subjective experience we call happiness.

    Happiness is a pleasant or joyful emotion we subjectively feel within us. We take pleasure in our lives, in our work, in our families and all those around us. We are positive, we are hopeful and often as a result, kind and loving.

    What external, physical factors may help to bring about such a state? Taking care of our material well being first and foremost, although the ascetic may take a different view. Looking after our health, eating and drinking properly, finding warmth, shelter and medicine when we need it. Exercising, being engaged, active in the world.

    Some of us will have different external needs to others. I may crave peace, silence and nature, others the excitement of the urban sprawl and the company of fellow humans. But whatever it is, this is the easiest part of happiness – you can mostly fix it.

    The internal, mental elements are something else and here it is not yet clear where you can choose and when your material constitution chooses for you.

    Here there is overlap between our own volition and introspection and the way our brain is wired, but both can be fixed. And my certainty is that the mechanics of so fixing our physical machinery will become ever more sophisticated and effective – thanks of course to science.

    Even if happiness is irreducible – even if like its fellow qualia it’s instantiation in base matter remains a mystery, we will become ever more able to induce that state.

    If we are physically broken we must try to fix ourselves – our brain that is. My friend Alfred seems to have made great steps in that direction with the use of psilocybin.

    The volitional part requires us to consider choice: are we free to choose? Do we have free will? We must proceed on the basis that we are so free – to concede to determinism is unlikely to ease the mind.

    And what mental effort must we make to enter the land of the blessed?

    Belief, above all we must cultivate belief. Belief in ourselves. Belief that even if the universe has no meaning or purpose pe se, we can create that for ourselves. Kindness also – we must extend it to ourselves and others. Love, by any other name.

    And interest and knowledge and beauty and good things. We must sing and paint and draw and dance – we must pour our thoughts and actions into those things we know creates in us the subjective experience we so desire.

    Have I gone too far? Will I be accused by the skeptical physicalist of spouting new age nonsence and airy-fairy bullshit?

    Perhaps so, but to such people I would say “this is how I see it”, “this is how I try to achieve happiness and often achieve it”. If for some of my readers I manage to bring a smile of recognition to their face, then I too will feel a measure of happiness and achievement for having done so.

  • Mysticism – Experience over Intellect

    Mysticism – Experience over Intellect

    Countless words have been written about mysticism but only direct experience will ever be able to convey what it is “like”.

    If you were a blind man you would never truly understand colour. Intellectually, you would be able to appreciate that the experience of “red” begins with light waves of a certain frequency, and that information conveyed to the brain by the eyes leads to an experience of the colour.  But without the ability to “see” red, you would never fully understand it on an intuitive level.

    So it is with any of the  qualia we humans experience. Mysticism is a “quale” – one of the qualia which (some) humans are able to sense or experience.

    There was once a time when I read widely on the topic. I read (in translation) the accounts of many of the Eastern and Western mystics. The Cloud of Unknowing for instance, an anonymous work of Christian mysticism written in Middle English in the latter half of the 14th century. The poetry of Rumi, the teachings of Buddhism, Zen or otherwise. The list goes on – mysticism has been a feature of human life throughout ages.

    Anyone not knowing where to start might try the seminal work of Evelyn Underhill “Mysticism: A Study in the Nature and Development of Spiritual Consciousness”. Or William James “The Varieties of Religious Experience”.

    I can think of no better definition of mysticism than that I found in a comment by Anna Nimm on a website called Materialism, Mysticism and Art

    I think of mysticism as direct knowledge of god, whether a personal or a pantheistic god synonymous with nature or a Dionysian life force. And it’s a form of union that is ecstatic, it transports one both beyond the self and also beyond concepts and words; it is a form of knowledge felt by the heart and body (or soul) rather than by the rational mind.

    I prefer “nature” or “life-force” to god, but these are mere words to describe the indescribable.

    But let me digress a little and think out loud about why Phil Stansfield’s website puzzles me so much.  My puzzlement being the spark which ignited this particular post.

    I must suppose that Phil’s interest in mysticism is academic. And a perfectly reasonable approach. Phil is a materialist and he seems to concentrate on the contributions made by “mysticism” to art, philosophy and culture while denying the “reality” of the experience.  He quotes much from philosophers and others who, throughout history, have had something to say on the topic.

    Much like the way religion is taught in schools these days – not as a faith but as literary criticism or history.

    And then it struck me – I am a “believer” and Phil is not. My interest in mysticism is through personal experience which has become more radical and better formed in recent years, after a lifetime of seeking.

    Phil’s interest (and I hope he will forgive me if I am wrong) is to catalog the works of other commentators who over the years have written about mysticism. He sees its influence throughout history but denies that mysticism has any intrinsic reality.

    In his concluding words to his first post Phil states:

    But it must be asked, what is the price paid in asserting and reflecting a philosophy which advocates flight from the material world and argues for an ‘acousmatic realm’ ………..?

    It seems that I tend to get things about faced and it has a great deal to do with my cognitive bias towards transcendence and the apparently non material.  When I see somebody writing about mysticism I mistakenly assume they are “believers” as well.

    I must never forget that I myself find religious dogma absurd. I must not ignore my interest in the works of Richard Dawkins and his ilk, and my layman’s passion for the explanatory power of science.

    My conviction that there is indeed a wizard of some sort behind the curtain should not blind me to the perfectly reasonable views and interests of those who are equally strongly convinced otherwise.

    I do not share Phil’s opinions but I nonetheless find his website a pleasurable and informative place to browse.

     

  • Hearing the Logos

    Hearing the Logos

    In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

    Or was it a song or a vibration perhaps? If there has been one abiding and constant thread to my life it has been a yearning for mystical experience. To see the face of god, to touch it. To witness the very essence of reality.

    You do not need to be conventionally religious to have your spine tingle, to feel the hairs rising from the back of your neck when you hear those words. You certainly do not have to subscribe to dogma – Eastern or Western.

    Perhaps my earliest conscious exposure to the concept  was from the Magician’s Nephew. I can not count how many times I thrilled to that song in the dark, calling life and existence to a barren and empty world.

    I have become tired these past few years of academic discourse, of science, of learning of any sort. Philosophy bores me, not least because of its arcane and incomprehensible jargon. As with religion, I have a strong conviction that most philosophers are stumbling blindly in the dark, however much they may believe they have discovered “Truth”.

    I can not claim that I know what reality is; I can not define the ineffable, let alone prove that it exists or that it is the fount of all being.

    I can only rely on my beliefs, my feelings, the strength of my conviction that behind the scenes there is some deep mystery we are missing. That behind the curtain there is a Wizard, even if he is not a conventional mage but a selection of obscure and thus far hidden laws.

    Science is wonderful – there is no doubt that without it we would be living a life of abject misery. Of poverty, disease and mud huts. But so far, while science has shown something of the mechanics of matter, it has failed to get to the bottom of what matter is.

    Consciousness is a prime example. Some claim it to be an emergent phenomena, arising from physics and the laws of nature. Others that it is in itself a separate law of nature – that consciousness simply “exists”.  Yet others still believe in a soul or a supernatural explanation of what we are.

    I can claim no expertise; I can venture no opinion.

    What I can say is that while science has explained much about how this particular physical universe works, it has left unexplained more than it has revealed. So far.

    Even if there is no such thing as a “supernatural”, the wonders of the natural are still so little understood that “god” may indeed yet be found in the gaps.  God in the sense of the ultimate explanation, the ultimate driving force of reality.

    Take the photon, electricity, the strong and weak nuclear forces. Take matter, energy. On any intuitive level has science really conveyed to us what they actually are? Where they came from? What they mean?  We know a little of what they can do but as to the rest, it is shrouded in deep mystery.

    What of the multiverse? Does it exist? How did it originate? Does it share the physical laws of this habitat of ours?

    It has long been my contention, my belief that intelligence can move towards “god”. Can become “godlike”. Can become god. That consciousness perhaps is “god” if developed sufficiently. That we can move towards an Omega Point where all will be revealed.

    Who knows, perhaps it is science which will take us there.

    But is it possible to intuit what is out there, even at our rudimentary stage of development?

    The mystics would have it so.

    And if I have seen any hint of another realm in all these years, it has been in music. Especially Renaissance polyphony, that pure, meditative, ethereal vibration.

    At times I have become so lost in music that any sense of self or body evaporates and I am left with pure consciousness. And ecstasy. A complete and utter transcendence of normal existence.

    At such times I know that I am, but I have no sense of “what” I am or “where” I am. At such times I wonder whether I am the music itself or a note from it. Any sense that the music originates in physical reality disappears and I am left in pure void.

    What do I make of these moments, other than to marvel at the joy?

    It tells me that there may be more to consciousness than we might believe when in more prosaic states of mind. Even though as a subjective and unverifiable experience it proves nothing, except perhaps to the recipient.

    A  neuroscientist will be able to see bits of the brain light up during such states but this is no proof of the reality or otherwise of what is experienced by the seer.

    And how does life feel in between such experiences? Different, I guess is the answer. You are left feeling that you have witnessed something deep, true and profound. It does not make you into a “good” person (or a bad one come to that) but it certainly makes you a lot more reflective and a far less amenable to to the absurdities and lures of our Darwinian and materialist society.

    It brings a wry grin as you glance at the pompous lead articles in the press, of the right or the left. It makes you sigh with impatience as The Donald blows the shit out of yet another “enemy”, instead of making peace with him.  It makes you vaguely amused by the foibles of the tycoons and the politicians to whom power and money is the end game.

    And has it made a “believer” out of me? Have I become one of the godly, the priestly cast so anxious to tell of our sins and to explain how many angels can dance on a pinhead?

    No. No to all of that. It has simply told me in clear and unambiguous terms that there is more to reality than we are customarily able to sense. It has informed me that there are unimaginable marvels to be discovered. It has helped me to decide what is of importance and what, assuredly, is not.

     

     

     

  • Letting go

    Letting go

    I hadn’t quite realized until very recently just how very damaging the human ego is.

    I have been letting go of late, just allowing things to pass me by. Not ignoring them, nor people.  Just not getting fussed about “stuff”.  It seems to add a whole new layer of serenity to life.

    Of course it may not last. I may get all busy again, and grumpy.  But while you are able to let go, you notice with gentle amusement just how much others don’t. Let go, that is.

    We had a vicar to stay the other night. One of our favorite guests and a man who has gained enormously over the years in wisdom. He was saying how fortunate I was to be able to let go and that given the choice, he would very much like to do the same. To retire, to go inwards, to preach occasionally in glorious chapels but not to have the daily struggle of a job.

    It has always puzzled me, the financial side of life. How do you let go as a busy stockbroker, let alone as coal miner.  Maybe the Dalai Lama can manage a busy life and retain inner peace but I don’t think I can.

    And so you are left with slight discomfort, guilt almost.

    I have always struggled with these beautiful words:

    Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more than the food, and the body than the raiment? Behold the birds of the heaven, that they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns.

    It sounds so right, is so right and yet in the modern world seems so unachievable for “everyman”.  For the “Man on the Clapham Ominbus”.

    Well I have no answer to that, except to surmise some gifted souls are able to carry tranquility within wherever they go and whatever they do. Dietrich Bonhoeffer comes to mind.

    The fact of the matter is I am lucky hermit, with just enough to be able to close my door and my mind to much of the world.  And I have only just realized that.

    I was at a gathering the other day and was struck at its turbulence. Not House of Commons debate style but nonetheless surprisingly un-tranquil for what should have been an evening of serenity and peace.

    And it seemed to be the ego which was at fault.  There was no clear leader, or at least none the assembly was content to follow peacefully. The would be head was constantly challenged, her decisions questioned and debated. The majority stayed quiet (perhaps like me they were watching with wry humor) but one or two definitely knew better and were not afraid to say so.

    Perhaps that is why I so often find myself alone and in silence. It suits me thus.

    I do like people, I really do. But I find posturing so tiring these days. And so amusing in a fashion.

    And so I shall continue to let the world pass me by.  To resist getting drawn into debate or petty rivalry. To mind my own business and bury my head, if not in the sand, then at least somewhere very quiet and very private.

    There is so much in the world which simply does not matter. And there are so few things that do.

    I think deep down we all know what really matters; or would know if we were able to think about it. If we had the time and the inclination to develop a quiet awareness of what to keep and what to drop and then act on it, we might just find ourselves on the right side of the Wardrobe door.

    In any event I will carry on trying.

     

     

     

     

     

  • Mysticism

    Mysticism

    Fascinated by the concept of transcendence I have started to conceptualize what I believe such states of existence could be.

    I have to say I find the use of religious terminology off putting in the extreme. I dislike intensely the concept of an overlord, an anthropomorphic (or other) master who determines my fate and who acts as a gatekeeper to a mythical realm of bliss. I can however accept religion and religious literature as an interpretation, a metaphor, or a pointer.

    Hence I find much enjoyment (instruction even) in the Psalms. But I view the Psalms as a poetic and often beautiful outpouring of human need and frailty. Human longing for safety and peace in an often frightening world. When reading the psalms I do not expect Jehova to pop up from the floor and save me or even speak to me. Nor would I wish him to.  Any more than I want or expect to meet Gandalf or Tom Bombadil. Or Sauron for that matter.

    I live in the 21st Century and find much religious thought, let alone dogma, belittling and degrading to the human spirit.

    Religion is, to quote that wonderful Eastern phrase, merely a finger pointing at the moon.  God was made in the image of man, not the reverse. God was a concept we invented to explain the apparently inexplicable.  To comfort ourselves that all is well and all manner of things are well.

    Such moments of clarity as I have had, such moments of bliss or apparent awakening have been of an altogether different sort.

    If I were ever to acquire the ability to enter permanently into such state I would be most disappointed to have a boss, a committee or indeed any fleeting remnant of what passes for authority.

    I have an extreme distaste for authority, perhaps because I believe, very strongly, that in a perfect world it would be unnecessary. In the same way that police would be unnecessary if there were no crime.  And medicine redundant in the absence of disease.

    Because I also believe very strongly that human justice is a poor joke and all too often used for purposes of repression and injustice, to keep an established class in situ.

    I also dislike intensely the grovelling concept of service so beloved of Western religion.  I do not wish to serve anybody thank you very much, and in the perfect world of bliss which exists in my own imagination, such service is neither requested nor necessary. There is nobody to serve and no services required.  Service can not, under any circumstances or system of logic, be perfect freedom, whoever it is you are expected to serve.

    So how do I envisage bliss? The transcendent state. The release from the drudgery, fear and horrors all too readily apparent in the physical world we see around us.

    The realm of god (“heaven”in English) is a different and in many ways separable concept from that of a “god”, a creator, an overlord. Or at least it is in my imagination; in my wishes. In my belief even.

    It is a state in which peace is not only attainable but ever present. It is a “place” where justice is natural and a fact of existence. Where there is plenty (perhaps because physical nourishment is no longer necessary). Where there is no pain, mental or physical. Where there is contentment. Where anxiety does not exists because there is no reason to be anxious.  Where guilt is an unknown and unnecessary concept.

    I have often thought of that old explanation of magic, or rather what super powers must seem like to a backward and technologically ignorant race.  We read much about mind, consciousness. Some still claim adherence to the concepts of Jung, some scientists even posit something not so very dissimilar to his universal consciousness.

    That consciousness just is. Is a law of nature, an irreducible feature like light or the nuclear force.

    Is it so very fanciful then to suppose that in the far distant future a form of consciousness may be found or indeed created without the frailties which attach to our own inferior version?

    A consciousness de-coupled from matter, free from the stifling necessity of defeating entropy day in, day out.

    I have heard many say that mysticism and science are perhaps not such strangers to each other. My own belief is that the future might reveal that the mystic state is what a backward people might call a reality created by a sufficiently advanced  species. As stone age man might construe  electricity as magic, so we deem nirvana or ecstasy.  Some impossibly unattainable state which has nonetheless been achieved by others eons removed from us in sophistication.

    I am sorry for my outspokenness in so far as it may upset or even insult the cherished beliefs of so many who cling to more traditional beliefs. But I do not feel that should prevent me from propounding my own equally deeply felt “beliefs”.

    It would not be enough to live in the imperfect Culture. But to be a member of a Sublimed species. That might just about do the trick.

  • The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

    The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

    Figuratively speaking I suspect the meek are indeed blessed and that in a sense they shall inherit, if not the earth, then at least a life of peace, tranquility and decency.

    Let me first fess up to a few things. I am not meek, nor ever have been. But I am coming to believe that I would probably like to be, ought to be even.  I really don’t want to be a wet sort of meek; not a namby pamby, tree hugging, goody two shoes. I think there must be another sort of meek without the weedy, soft voice, the toe less sandals and the diet of brown rice and lentils. Nor would I wish to be a Holy Joe.  I have no mission to save souls, even supposing we have them. Or at least not with that sort of messianic fervor.

    But, you know, I really have been thinking hard about meekness.  I have all too often been a loud mouthed critic of all and sundry and it can not be the right way to live. Sometimes (often even) I am the very opposite of meek and I think that probably shows through in some of my more outspoken thoughts on this eccentric and idiosyncratic website.

    I have been minded to ponder the topic of meekness for a very long time. I have always suspected the “rightness” of it, even if I have not practiced it.

    I suppose it came to a head when I read my friend John Freeman’s final piece on Jordan Petersen today.

    I can not help but start out in a somewhat un-meek fashion when I say that our Jordan and his ilk  are really not my cup of tea.  I confess that I have never read very much of what Petersen has to say, since what little I did read made me realize I did not want to go any further. All too Ayn Rand.

    There is something I detest about grand world schemes, huge diatribes telling people how to live and how to create a better society.  They always seem to end in dystopia and mass murder.

    Mr Petersen does not seem very meek either. But enough, I have already said that I want to curb my poor behavior and further criticism of this misguided figure is not the way to go for a would be Mr Meek.

    So what is my idea of “meek” and why do I think “meekness” might be a good thing?

    It is minding my own business for a start. I want to live my life in the forest you see in the heading to my post, again, perhaps in a metaphorical sense. In my mind I want silence and solitude, peace and calm, quiet satisfaction in all that I do. How better to achieve that than to extend the blessing of “meekness” to others.

    It means stepping back in all situations and thinking before I speak and act. It means biting my tongue if I have to, so as not to criticize and cause upset. Being mindful.

    I have been trying harder recently, oddly enough provoked by the awful speed awareness course I attended.

    There was not, of course, any spiritual aspect to those awful four hours spent in a recreation of David Brent’s Office.

    And yet a lot of what was said was so very applicable in all aspects of life. Slowness and deliberation for a start. Thinking things through calmly before acting. Going through life at such a speed that hurt and catastrophe can be avoided.

    Over the past few weeks it has all come to seem to very applicable to life in general.  To give way, to smile, to slow down. To forgive aggression so that you defeat it in rather the same way as you might parry a blow in Judo. Don’t hit back, absorb and render the anger harmless.

    I suspect you could apply such meekness is every area of your life. I must try. Business – don’t shaft people, sell honest products. Writing on the internet – try not to be cutting, cynical and rude. Personal relationships – take the blame, put up and shut up.

    And the silence thing. That seems to play an important role in my idea of a bin load of meekness. I suppose a part of that silence might be to lead by example rather than telling people they have got it wrong. To mind one’s own business and let the world get on in the way it has always done. Let it pass you by.

    I have no desire to be a quietist, at least not in any religious sense, and yet I am so at odds with the world that passive withdrawal toward worldly affairs seems the right course of action.

    I think you can find silence in the noise. I do not think you have to withdraw in any literal sense from the world to discover meekness or to practice it. I do think you have to make a determined effort to understand what worldliness does to you and that to achieve meekness you would have to abide by a decision not to engage in the sort of behavior worldliness normally entails.

    My suspicion would be that you could find quietness and meekness almost anywhere. It is a state of mind, not a physical place. You might find quiet satisfaction screwing on toothpaste caps on the factory floor. Or being a village postman, or a window cleaner.

    I don’t think it would be very easy to be meek acting as a prosecutor in the criminal courts or in any sort of occupation where conflict was a necessary part of the job.

    But I think there are many jobs and many occupations where the sting could be taken out of the tail. Where, even though some participants behave in an aggressive and unpleasant manner, you might change the whole situation for the better by refusing to respond in kind.

    Perhaps then, meekness comes in small steps. In a myriad of small ways. Perhaps it is a matter of questioning your every thought and action and making sure that you offer your thoughts and services and products in a peaceful way.

    And then perhaps you will inherit (in contradiction to the diktat of Book of Common Prayer) that “peace which the world cannot give”. Because I am coming to believe that it can.

     

  • To Concentrate on “Good Things”

    To Concentrate on “Good Things”

    How much better you feel when you focus on the good and ignore the bad.

    Is it wrong of me to categorize things in this way? Can there be said to be “good” and “bad” in any objective sense? Some would argue not but I choose to ignore their reasoning and their conclusion.

    In my subjective consciousness there is good and there is bad. I have been told that there is good going on in the world and that I should look for it. I am convinced that to do so is to help cast off the black lens of accidie. That to don rose tinted spectacles is an important part of changing one’s mind. In other words (physiology allowing) many of us should be capable of brightening up our lives by altering the way we perceive the world.

    I tend to concentrate on the negative, to see only blackness and dark whereas what I should be doing is searching for light, for warmth.

    Yes, in many ways the world is a shitty place and we are a shitty species. But it isn’t really our fault. We have evolved in a brutishly simple way – to survive. Is this any more our fault than the violent nature of the lion or the fox?

    Lettersquash argues nobody has deliberately created the evil Matrix in which we live and that there are no grand conspiracy theories which accurately reflect our society and our lives. There is no evil capitalist plot, no one is determined to screw the planet or its population. It is just that most if not all of us act purely out of self interest. And I feel he is right.

    So cast away the concept of “fault” (and evil, if you so choose) and look for people who are doing good things. People who are nice, and wholesome and worthy.

    I am told by my friend John that there are good things going on in the world. When I spoke of the horrors of the UK and US penal system he pointed out the enlightenment taking place in Greenland and Scandinavia. There you have it – look to the good and not to the bad. Although we should try and convert the latter into the former. Even if we do not believe in absolutes of good and evil, most us can recognize what is wrong when we spot it.

    I have been reading another blog recently and am coming to see where Keith is coming from. It isn’t god out there, just reality. Which is equally wonderful and just needs to be found. As he says, it is not “mystical” if it is real and I am coming to believe that perhaps his reality is “real”.

    What prompted this latest nonsense of mine? I have been spending a few days in splendid isolation down in the country and as usual the silence speaks to me. I hope that perhaps my perception is changing slightly, that maybe I am beginning to look through the mirror slightly less darkly.

    I am prompted to think of the little friends I call Gilbert and George. I had Gilbert and her mother staying for a couple of days and there is nothing better to promote enlightenment than a lovely and intelligent young woman. Beautiful of mind, so far as I can tell. Good through and through like her sister George. Or at least so far as I can tell.

    I call them Gilbert and George because ever since they could talk they have finished each other’s sentences and looked at each other before speaking.

    I have never heard Gilbert or George speak ill of anyone or anything. Which is especially odd since they have had to put up with their wilfully difficult and odd uncle all their lives. Perhaps I am a cross they feel they have to bear.

    I have always naughtily provoked these two into blushing but now they are both young adults I have to try harder. In an attempt to bring a rosy hue to Gilbert’s cheeks I recommended she watched Fleabag. Much to my amazement both Gilbert and George had watched every episode in both series.

    That’s called growing up I guess but it has not spoiled the girls or their charm.

    It is not surprising I turned out a miserable old fucker. I blame my family in part, although they never intentionally set out to wreck my life.

    But with the odd exception they were all warped and damaged in some way. I have long pondered nature and nurture and both have certainly played their role in forging the bars of my cage.

    My parents argued incessantly and unpleasantly. It was deeply disturbing. My mother raged at her mother and her siblings; I don’t think there was ever a family lunch when one of them didn’t storm out in a temper . One of my relatives was nicknamed “Moanie”. As far as my mother was concerned the rest of the world was “common” and unworthy. She or (perhaps they – my parents ) fell out with all their siblings and so we became deprived of cousins as time moved on.

    Surviving relatives still bicker and worse. Divorce and unhappiness has plagued various of them.

    Leaving aside the undoubted genetic component, these people could choose to behave otherwise but do not.

    So I must battle to cast off the deep black goggles I am so prone to sport.

    Our reality is what we choose to make it.

  • Hope and Despair

    Hope and Despair

    For the miserable, moody and mercurial, one’s outlook can swivel on a sixpence. Or dime, if you prefer.

    Not so for the irrepressibly cheerful, the waggy Labradors who go through life with a smile on their face and the conviction they are about to win the lottery. Waggies are always cheerful, pretty much. It takes a lot to get a Labrador down.

    Back to the perennially miserable. The external situation may change little and yet the mood might swing through 180 degrees. And back again. It has to be down to wonky wiring.

    Today was a case in point. I have been working on a project for over a year with little success. With repeated failure in fact. And then today, after my arrival at our cottage on the happily unfashionable East Kent coast, I was met with the news that the project had blossomed.

    After a few bad weeks (or has it been months?) something has actually gone right. Sadly I have not won the lottery but then I am too mean (and too statistically aware) to engage in that absurdity.

    None the less, the triumph feels to be a pretty major one. Suddenly the sun shines and I can see the Teletubbies dancing in the garden. Lala, Dipsy, Po and of course Tinky-Winky.

    I am always reminded of my wife and her sisters when I watch the Teletubbies. And there the merry, bossy little souls are, dancing around like rotund little faeries in the garden.

    Is there any lesson to be learned from all this? No, I don’t think there is really. The trite tropes one may find scattered throughout the internet come to mind.  All of which are bollux.

    Don’t give up. Keep trying. Rome wasn’t built….. Bollox.

    The stark fact is that we are all built differently and we are largely stuck with the results of the genetic lottery.

    I was reminded today that an uncle of mine suffered from black moods. I had forgotten the poor fellow had a major meltdown and became convinced the CIA were after him. He was a lecturer at the University of Hong Kong back in the ’60s, and his specialist subject was Tibet.

    That was in the days of the truly warped and horrible monster Mao Tse Tung.  What a brute he was, with his nasty little red books and bad tailoring. Should have tried Sam’s in Hong Kong. Wonder if they are still there?  I must have had all of 20 suits made there 30 years ago and promptly stuck two fingers up to investment banking. So I never really wore any of them – still stuck in the attic I think.

    Anyway poor old Uncle H was convinced the CIA were after him and to be fair, a left wing university prof might well have been a target, especially if he had inside info on the ghastly Reds.

    There seem to be a lot of nutters among my close and immediate family; some of them are still around, creating chaos and misery for their nearest and dearest.

    And so back to me. Miserable victim of an uncaring and random universe. Recipient of three pounds of grey shyte which passes for a brain; all the wrong bits connected to all the other wrong bits.

    What to do when you are amidst the encircling gloom? Stuck somewhere half way across the Styx.  Well, you could, I suppose reach for your copy of the Peaceful Pill Handbook.

    The only other remedy I have found remotely helpful is to cut off, completely and utterly from everyone and everything. Bring down the shutters, lock the door. Disconnect the phone. Refuse to speak to anyone – those around you can contribute little at these dark times.

    And then the fog may lift for while; not for long perhaps. But you enjoy it while it does; “normality” briefly returns.

    It is hardly surprising that such a condition comes to rule your life.  It warps and corrodes your every thought and governs your every achievement (or non-achievement). For many of us, a job would be impossible.

    I’m sure some manage better than others. But my natural state of mind is cynicism and introspection. And of course black pessimism. For the world, the universe and for my own particular corner of it.

    The Labrador wears rose tinted spectacles; I wear impenetrably black lenses.

     

  • Lead Kindly Light

    Lead Kindly Light

    I found myself transported back to the time of Cardinal Newman this evening, sitting in a glum old seaman’s church on the coast at Walmer.

    Neo Gothic and built in 1848, it sits opposite the sea where for hundreds of years the locals took supplies out to ships sheltering in the Downs.

    Once one of the biggest ports in the country, nearby Deal housed Nelson and Lady Hamilton on occasion, as the British fleet was anchored offshore, protected in a sheltered channel between the shingle shore and the legendary Goodwin Sands.

    The evening glowered; the light was poor and the rain drizzled down on the grey, cold and lifeless seafront.

    And yet.

    And yet there was calm, beauty even. I love dour Victorian churches with their fake Gothic arches and their heavily coloured (and equally heavily didactic) stained glass windows. The folk seemed from another time too. I was reminded of my fierce old Baptist grandmother, born at the end of the 19th Century, who lived in nearby Ramsgate.  She was present somehow, amidst these local townspeople, a part of them.

    Similar class, similar trade I guess and these people too reminded me of nothing short of Victorian shopkeepers. Was it my imagination or did I see mutton chop whiskers and frock coats? Who knows, the light played tricks on me perhaps.

    Apart from one youthful member of the Choir, I seemed to be one of the younger participants.  A not uncommon occurrence if one has a passion for sung evensong, in a format which has remained little changed since the days of Henry Tudor.

    As is my wont, I turned up early for a few minutes of peace and reflection and while the choir practiced I thumbed through the race card.

    I have often sung versions of Cardinal Newman’s beautiful poem but tonight the words struck me with more than usual poignancy.  We were to sing it as one of the hymns.

    “Lead, kindly light, amid the encircling gloom,
    Lead thou me on;
    The night is dark, and I am far from home;
    Lead thou me on;
    Keep thou my feet; I do not ask to see
    The distant scene: one step enough for me.”

    I felt a mixture of emotions. A fish out of water perhaps, despite my unmistakable Englishness.  It’s been a long time since I sat in my grandmother’s modest children’s clothing shop in Ramsgate, filching Victorian pennies out of the ancient wooden till.  With permission from the old dear, I hasten to add.

    The other side of the family was different altogether – wealthy, vulgar perhaps, with hindsight. And the years since childhood have taken me so far from Ramsgate and little shops in provincial high streets. More is the pity maybe.

    Glamour, travel, expensive hotels and, well, some degree of wealth I suppose. For all that that means.

    So it is grounding, I guess, sitting in this church. Back to my humble roots perhaps, or those of my grandmother.

    And those wonderful words of Newman – let someone else worry. Look not where your path might lead. The night was indeed dark and although I was not far from home, I felt it. Emotionally, physically.  I am all too often amidst encircling gloom and pride certainly ruled my will. Probably still does.

    To have the childlike faith Newman talks of – what a wonder that must be.

    So long Thy power hath blest me, sure it still
    Will lead me on.
    O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till
    The night is gone,
    And with the morn those angel faces smile,
    Which I have loved long since, and lost awhile!

    But, you know, with or without conventional faith there is a lot in the teaching. The code of behavior – modesty, kindness, lack of show. The idea that you should just plug on and let it all happen. And let someone else worry about it.

    The whole experience left me feeling quiet, contemplative and satisfied. Cut out the god stuff and those Christians have got much of it spot on.

     

  • Out of Your Head

    Out of Your Head

    It is easy enough to empathize with addicts if, for large chunks of your existence, you have had an overwhelming need to get out of your own head.

    Out of your head and off your head come to much the same thing for the cognoscenti.

    There is a vast gulf between what your intellect tells you and what your emotions crave. Or should we call them qualia. Not that anybody knows of course; what qualia are or what consciousness is. But you certainly know when they and it have gone wrong.

    Your intellect may tell you that objectively nothing is wrong. You have a roof over your head, food, companionship. And yet you ride an emotional roller coaster, coming up for breath occasionally only to scream as you descend into the depths once again.

    Is it any wonder that many turn to drink or drugs to rid the demon from their head.

    I have been meeting up regularly with a friend who feels the need, more often than otherwise, for what he calls “space”. Headspace.

    Many an ex soldier is trapped inside enemy territory long after he has left the field of conflict. Thanks to the physiological mess inside his head, he is trapped in an endless loop of destructive, corrosive thoughts and emotions.

    In the case of a soldier, it may well be that he is now “safe”. The conflict is over, the battle won or lost. And yet years later it will still be raging inside his head even though he has lived as a civilian for decades.

    And it not just the soldier who craves space in his head. Nor just those who have been through trauma. There are people whose lives seem enviable, successful even, who harbor such trauma within that they too long to escape from their own head.

    And so to addiction. The addict wants to alter his consciousness. He wants to avoid pain and to bring about, if not pleasure, then at least the cessation of misery.

    It can’t be done of course. Or at least not with most substances currently at our disposal. For all the talk of miracles brought about by modern science, we do not understand ourselves well enough to cure a condition which has plagued us since the dawn of time and killed millions.

    The ultimate out of your head experience is one that many eventually resort to. Some extinguish life slowly through alcohol or opiates. Wittingly or unwittingly. Others opt out altogether and exit their heads rapidly and permanently.

    Should you embrace the absurd as Camus suggested? Like Sisyphus should you endlessly roll a stone up a hill, for it to roll down again each time. Or should you exit the stage altogether and choose oblivion rather than endless torture.

    We must leave aside the view of some that a crime or sin would result from a permanent exit.  We may reasonably assume that such people do not suffer from the need to escape from themselves and should thus have no voice in the matter.

    But perhaps there is light after all?

    Medical research from the likes of John Hopkins Hospital in the US, Imperial College in London and a whole trail of others is suggesting that to get out of your head is just what you need.

    The lucky few who have participated in their trials in recent years have, quite literally, left their own heads. Left their troublesome consciousness at the door and joined in union with an ego-less universe.   Courtesy of a huge dose of psychedelic drugs.

    A real exit (for a time) without finality. A break in existence. A chance for the tangled neural pathways to melt and re-form in new and less painful configurations.

    Who knows, after that, how we might approach the Absurd? Perhaps after all we may find life less so.

    Perhaps more of us should get off our heads. Or out of them. Wotteva.